Who cares?—so long as I get to see gay cowboys going at it all tender and dignified and chapless.  Which, that’s certainly worth having to sit through a couple of incoherent George Clooney speeches and an odious Elton John musical number, in my book. Because here’s the thing:  protein wisdom is nothing if not intellectually curious.  And awards?  Meaningless baubles—particularly when to you it’s all about the work.

From Haaretz: The United Nations has reprimanded a security guard for drawing swastikas on a log sheet later seen by a guard from Israel, a UN spokesman said. The guard who drew the swastikas was issued a letter of reprimand and was asked to attend sensitivity training for the September incident, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday. Dujarric would not identify the guard who was reprimanded. A UN official speaking

Rather than pontificate at length about the successful coup against Lawrence Summers by the perpetually “powerless” forces within university humanities departments (who, as anyone not a reactionary conservative will assure you, is perfectly ideologically balanced and has no particular political agenda or ax to grind), I thought I’d simply link and excerpt from a few pieces commenting on Summers’ dismissal. First, here’s Alan Dershowitz, quoted by the WaPo: “It’s a

Two long posts today, both lost to posterity because of some glitch in the publishing software.  And honestly?  I have no desire to try to reproduce them in full. So here are some quick notes:

Q: Why did Andrew Sullivan cross the road? A: Why, to protest America’s descent into the depths of evil, of course!—a gesture meant to signify performatively that “no one in future generations will be able to defend America’s honor, without having [our degrading and inhumane treatment of jihadists] thrown back in their faces.  Or, if you prefer, one can interpret the crossing as an artistic metaphor for his resignation that